Media a pivotal player in libel suit against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Mayor Rob Ford is framed by tinted windows as he gets into his SUV following the first day of a $6-million defamation case in Toronto Tuesday, November 13, 2012.

Photograph by: Darren Calabrese/National Post
, Postmedia News

TORONTO — Again and again, perhaps even dozens of times, lawyer Brian Shiller mentioned the Toronto Sun and the allegedly defamatory article in question. He spoke of “sensational” headlines for the purpose of influencing the then-underway election and spoke of his poor client as “roadkill.”

Honest to Pete, the mythical “reasonable person” so often referred to in these proceedings, wandering into Ontario Superior Court Judge John Macdonald’s courtroom in Toronto Monday, would have been certain it was the oft-cheeky tabloid that was being sued.

But no, the paper isn’t part of the lawsuit.

Rather, it is the fellow whose remarks back in August of 2010 the newspaper brazenly torqued — and in this business, all newspapers do that from time to time, with one newspaper torquing one way and another torquing the other — who is being sued, that is, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Despite a week of by-the-seat-of-your-pants instruction in libel and defamation law that is a byproduct of Ford’s trial, I for one still have no clue why or how it is that the alleged roadkill’s lawyers aren’t also suing the Sun, as is the norm.

The purported roadkill is George Foulidis, the operator of the Boardwalk Café, whose corporate name is Tuggs Inc., in Toronto’s eastern beach.

He is a handsome 53-year-old who was first awarded an exclusive 20-year lease to build and operate a restaurant on the prime piece of city-owned waterfront parkland.

This was done through a Request for Proposal, an RFP.

As that lease approached its expiry in 2007, Foulidis naturally enough began to try to negotiate for its renewal.

Sadly for him, city staff — on high alert after a recent judicial inquiry into untendered computer lease contracts — decided the city ought to issue another RFP.

Happily for him, city council and various committees ultimately told their own staff to blow that RFP idea out their bums, and gave Foulidis another 20-year lease anyway, with more exclusive rights over more beaches land in what is arguably an even sweeter deal.

At the time that new lease was being finalized and finally signed, Ford was running for mayor and the election campaign was in full swing.

On Aug. 11, he popped into the Sun for a meeting with the editorial board.

It was a friendly affair, perhaps akin to the reception a policy wonk would find at an editorial board meeting at The Globe and Mail.

A tape of this meeting was belatedly discovered and is now in evidence at the trial, as is a 30-page transcript. The tape is replete with much chuckling, lots of softball questions, and is brilliant evidence of the old definition of editorial writers as those who come down from the mountain, after the battle is over, to shoot the wounded.

It was only late in the meeting, on Page 22 of the transcript, that Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy raised the issue of what she called “the Foulidis contract”. On her second try, Ford replied, “Wha … On the Tuggs?”

He then went on to say the three phrases — an apparent reference to the deal being corrupt, that the deal “stinks to high heaven” and that he wished “you guys knew what happened behind closed doors” — that are the alleged libel of Foulidis.

It’s the reference to “corruption” that really stung Foulidis, as he testified here last week. He knew the deal was genuinely controversial; there had, two years earlier, even been placard-waving protesters objecting to his lease, and the local councillor, Sandra Bussin, took considerable heat for having gone to bat for the deal.

All of that he could bear, Foulidis essentially said. But to label the deal corrupt was too much to bear, and greatly embarrassed him.

The strange thing about the $6-million suit is that it was the Sun that went to town on the corruption angle, not Ford.

The next day, the paper gave over its front page to a picture of Ford (looking remarkably younger than he does now; the bloody job does age the occupant) and the headline, in war-size type, “Council ‘corrupt’”.

A subhead read, “Ford lashes out at Boardwalk decision,” and inside was the offending story.

Ford’s actual remarks about the deal are milquetoast, even circumspect, compared to the play the paper gave the story, though it’s certainly clear from the whole tape that he was a strong proponent of tendering and loathed the “horse-trading” that routinely went on at council.

And that infamous meeting, at which council gave the final thumbs up to the deal, was in fact preceded by a three-hour secret meeting, just as Ford had remembered.

His lawyer, Gavin Tighe, will argue that the certified copy of the minutes, showing the break for the confidential meeting, should be considered evidence, and then will complete his closing remarks Tuesday.

Mea culpa: In a column about this last week, because I am a moron, I conflated Ford’s testimony about that secret meeting (where councillors, he said, “went snake, ballistic” in fear the deal could be killed and frantically worked the room) with Sandra Bussin’s earlier support for the Tuggs’ deal and said she was there. In fact, Ms. Bussin recused herself from that entire meeting, the closed-door part included, and didn’t vote. She had similarly recused herself from all votes on the deal from February of 2007 on. Apologies for the goof.

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